Healing Stones

by Nancy Rue

  Ethan himself sat on the edge of his wide desk, just shy of the stacks of files that were perpetually there. He looked the same as always—prematurely white hair brushed close to his round head, eyes direct over the Roman nose that gave his profile power, a permanent vertical line etched into the ruddy skin between his eyebrows. He wore the usual tweed slacks and hung clasped hands on the leg that didn’t touch the floor.

  I’d only seen Ethan Kaye angry a few times. I could add this to the list.

  At least the fury didn’t seem to be directed my way. In the instant before his eyes found me, they were drilled into the man in the padded Windsor chair to his left. I stifled a groan.

  Kevin St. Clair was head of the religion department, so I saw him daily. But even if I hadn’t, he bore too close a resemblance to a blowfish for me to ever mistake him for anyone else. His thick lips consumed the lower half of his face, and his eyelids nearly met the bags beneath them when he scowled, which was often.

  “Dr. Costanas,” he said. His voice was the worst thing about him. He hailed from Ohio, but he always spoke like a Georgia preacher, as if he’d learned to speak Church in divinity school. “We’ve been waiting for you.”

  Ethan shot him a look. “You’re right on time, Demi. Why don’t you have a seat?”

  His voice I loved. Ethan actually was southern, born and bred in Tennessee, schooled at Vanderbilt. He possessed a gentle firmness only true gentlemen from below the Mason-Dixon Line seemed able to master. Even with the tension in the room as thick as dough, I felt better as I took the chair opposite Kevin, next to the other man.

  I didn’t know Wyatt Estes very well. He was a sixtyish businessman with a large head of iron-colored hair that looked as if it had been commanded to shoot back in large waves. One of CCC’s major financial donors with, according to Gina, money in his genes. Huntington Hall was named after his grandfather, Howard. Mr. Estes wasn’t on the same side of the theological fence as Ethan, though he never pretended gentility the way St. Clair did. He was a straightforward Washingtonian to the core, the kind of man I’d grown up around.

  He barely acknowledged my presence. He seemed far more interested in a manila folder on the low table between himself and Kevin. He ran his thick fingers along the edges as if he were trying to straighten them.

  St. Clair cleared his throat. “To get back to what I was saying—”

  “I think we’ve wrung all the juice out of that topic,” Ethan said. “Let’s get this over with.”

  Kevin slanted against the back of his chair, arms folded like a belligerent child. Ethan looked at me, reluctance in his eyes.

  “I still say Archer should be here,” Kevin said.

  “This doesn’t hinge on his presence.” Wyatt Estes’s voice was surprisingly high-pitched, like the bark of a terrier.

  “You did try to get in touch with him?” Kevin said to Ethan.

  Ethan turned to me. “Do you know where Zach is?”

  The question wasn’t accusatory, but the tone was grim. He knew. I sucked dry air.

  “I haven’t seen him today,” I said.

  Wyatt Estes flipped open the folder. “Was this the last time you saw him?”

  I stared at the contents he thumped with his index finger, and I gasped. It was a picture of me. It could only be me, though I’d never seen myself in a moment of passion before—eyes half closed, mouth half open in the expectation of ecstasy as Zach’s hands gripped my bare shoulders and his lips hovered over mine.

  Estes pushed that one aside to reveal another—my eyes startled like a doe’s, hands holding Zach’s head against my collarbone. Then another, showing more of me than a camera had ever captured before.

  “All right.” Ethan slid the folder off the table and tossed it behind him onto his desk. “You’ve made your point.”

  “No.” Kevin pursed the blowfish lips at me. “I think Dr. Costanas has made it for us.”

  Only the fact that Kevin St. Clair had seen a picture of me bare-chested kept me momentarily speechless.

  St. Clair leaned toward Ethan. “I have to wonder—has Dr. Costanas somehow gotten the message that this kind of behavior is acceptable on our campus now?” He pulled his lips into an upside-down U. “And that of course begs the question of whether or not our students have been similarly impacted. Of course, we can’t know that. We don’t have pictures of them—”

  “Here’s the bottom line, Kaye,” Wyatt Estes said. His jowls jittered like nervous hands. “I’m not the only donor who will pull his support if something isn’t done. Fowler—Gentry—Collins—if any of them knew that this kind of thing is allowed to go on—”

  “‘Allowed to go on’?” I said.

  St. Clair and Estes looked at me as if they were surprised I remained vertical, rather than cowering under the table. I pressed my hands to my thighs to conceal their shaking.

  “Do you think Ethan knew about this and said, ‘Oh, sure—you two kids go ahead’?”

  St. Clair grunted. “Possibly you could have inferred it from one of Dr. Kaye’s sermons—”

  “What am I, twelve?” I said. “I committed the sin, Kevin—on my own. It was my decision, and I never thought for a minute that Ethan would approve, or even look the other way.”

  The blowfish lips drew into a sanctimonious purse.

  “I fail to see what this has to do with Ethan,” I said to Estes.

  The man’s nostrils flared like apocalyptic horns. “This happened under Dr. Kaye’s watch. He is the one ultimately accountable for the morality—or lack thereof—on this campus.”

  “Look, what do you want?” Ethan’s voice veered close to an edge I didn’t want him to cross.

  “We want your resignation, Dr. Kaye,” Wyatt Estes said. “Tender it, and this mess goes away.”

  “What?”

  Once again they looked at me, this time in apparent annoyance that I was still there, still daring to speak.

  “That is the most—inane thing I have ever heard,” I said. “If anyone should resign, it should be me.”

  The words came of their own accord—and yet they were the only ones I could say.

  “Demi—” Ethan said.

  “For you to step down over something I did makes no sense, Ethan. I would expect you to fire me anyway, now that you know.” I looked at Wyatt Estes, who watched me through narrowed eyes.

  “Not that it’s any of your business,” I said, “but I went there last night to end the relationship because I could no longer teach here in good conscience and continue the affair.”

  “That was good-bye?” Kevin said.

  “Shut up,” I shot back.

  Ethan put up both hands, eyes closed like a weary father. “I can’t let you do this, Demi.”

  “You have no choice. It’s done.” I looked at Wyatt Estes again. “Your ‘mess’ has gone away.”

  He arched an eyebrow at Ethan. “And Dr. Archer?”

  “What about him?” Ethan said.

  “You’ll ask for his resignation as well?”

  St. Clair’s eyes bulged from their pouches. “What are you saying, Wyatt? You’re going to take their resignations over his?”

  “I see no reason to do otherwise.” Wyatt Estes swiveled his big head toward Ethan again. “But I give you fair warning. If there is one more incident of misconduct, you will either resign, or I will withdraw my financial support.”

  “What about last time?” St. Clair said.

  Wyatt Estes merely got to his feet. “I think we’re through here.”

  “Not quite.” Dr. Kaye reached behind him and picked up the folder. “I want the negatives. There is to be no publicity about this—absolutely none. Dr. Costanas has already punished her-self—”

  “You see?” St. Clair waved a finger at Estes.

  “—and I see no reason to put her family through any unnecessary pain.”

  “You have children?” Estes said to me.

  “Yes.”

  His lip curled, but he nodded. “Agreed. Kay
e, I’d like copies of both letters of resignation.”

  “As soon as you turn over the negatives,” Ethan said.

  Wyatt Estes nodded again and exited. Kevin stared after him, lips parted, and then seemed to collect himself. He elongated his neck, looking for all the world like E.T., and departed through the slit of an opening Estes left him.

  Ethan crossed the room and pushed the door shut. The click of the latch snapped in my head. Except for Andy Callahan, who made himself invisible at the window, I was alone in the room with the man I looked up to most in the world and a file full of pornographic pictures of myself.

  “I’m so sorry, Ethan,” I said.

  He stopped me with a look that reached into my chest and pulled my heart out. “What were you thinking, Demi? What in the world were you thinking?”

  I stared down at my hands. “I wasn’t thinking at all. I was caught up in a feeling—like I was obsessed—and I couldn’t get free.”

  It sounded so pathetic. I could have been any angst-ridden adolescent, begging to be understood.

  “You’ve put me in a very bad position.”

  “I know that,” I said.

  “Do you?” Ethan leaned against the front of his desk. “You’ve let me down—the students—the whole college.”

  I didn’t answer. What, actually, was there to say? He was laying out everything I’d already butchered myself with.

  “Did you think about your Faith and Doubt project?”

  “I can’t stand that I’ve jeopardized that.”

  “That’s what I don’t understand.” Ethan’s voice sank. “Something is very wrong for you to risk all of that.”

  “I’ve never done anything like this before—I didn’t even think I could—”

  The pause was so long I thought I would die in it.

  “I can’t quite wrap my mind around all this yet,” he said finally. He started toward the window, hand running down the back of his head, and stopped as if he’d just realized Andy Callahan was still in the room. He sat stiffly in the chair Wyatt Estes had vacated, looking hard at me.

  “I trusted you—both of you. You were the only people I thought I could share my concerns with about the direction things are taking.”

  “I haven’t betrayed that, Ethan.”

  “Did you miss the little scene that just took place here? This was exactly what they needed to put me in the place I’m in right now. If I step down from this presidency, you know they’ll bring in somebody Estes could work like a puppet. I want to continue to guide this college in the direction I think God wants.”

  I bit down on my lip.

  “If I stay and this gets out—and I don’t take any action—I’ll be misrepresented as some radical and suffer the withdrawal of funds.”

  “That’s why I resigned,” I said. “I wasn’t trying to be a martyr.”

  Ethan shook his head. “I know that. I also know that if it weren’t this, they’d have found something else eventually. It isn’t over.” He grunted softly. “I allowed you to get the best of him in front of Wyatt Estes, and he’s not going to forget that.”

  “But now you won’t have Zach and me to run interference for you.”

  He seared me with a look.

  “In the end,” I said to my lap, “we almost took you down, didn’t we?”

  “We being the operative word.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You didn’t do this alone.”

  My head came up.

  “You don’t have any idea where Zach is?”

  “I checked his office and the chapel,” I said. “One of his students said he wasn’t in his classroom.”

  “Gina hasn’t buzzed me. He hasn’t shown up.”

  I could hear my pulse in my ears. “I don’t know what happened after I left the boat last night. There was a fire—”

  “I saw that in the paper—”

  “But I still thought he’d take care of the film—unless he couldn’t because he was injured.” My gaze locked with Ethan’s. “How did Estes get the pictures?”

  “I don’t know. He wouldn’t say, except that they were brought to him last night. He called St. Clair . . .” He let the rest fade into our silence.

  Too much had slammed into me at once. The things that held me together were shattering one by one.

  “I have to ask you a few questions.”

  I sat up straight and dried my palms on each other. “Ask me anything you want.”

  “Who else knows about this—thing with you and Zach?”

  “Nobody.”

  “You didn’t tell Gina?”

  I felt my eyes bulge. “Are you kidding? I’m not exactly proud of it. I haven’t told a soul.”

  “I’d appreciate your keeping it that way—with one exception.” The wise eyes I so respected searched my face. “Look, Demi, this whole thing is so un-you. You are a good, moral woman, and I know something has gone wrong for you to make a choice like this. Please get help.”

  “Help? You mean like—”

  “I mean a good pastoral counselor or a therapist. I know a—”

  “Thank you.” I stood up. “I appreciate your concern, Ethan—I do. But I know what happened, and I’ll make sure it never happens again.”

  I fumbled for my purse and found the door.

  “If you need anything at all—”

  “I’m fine,” I said to the doorknob.

  “You’ll be missed, Demi,” he said.

  As I hurried down the front steps of Huntington Hall in the midmorning drizzle, I knew I would miss me too. Because I was leaving a chunk of myself behind, and I had only myself to blame.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  I canceled my classes and stayed cocooned in my office all day, ostensibly to write my letter of resignation. In truth, I clung to mugs of coffee I never drank and watched my e-mail like an obsessed hawk.

  Every footfall in the hallway sent me running to the door. I called Zach’s cell phone on the half hour. I even pressed my ear to the shared wall between our offices, until I told myself I’d need quaaludes if I didn’t get a grip.

  Zach always promised he would sweep the stars aside to be there for me. He would show up. And I had to see him. Surely he didn’t know we were “resigning.”

  But the sense that he hadn’t believed I was leaving him gnawed at me most. It was now a matter of photographic record that I hadn’t done much to convince him. If I could talk to him—that’s all—one more time . . .

  And make sure that he was still alive. As hard as I’d worked for twenty-one years to deal with the possibility that my husband could die in a fire, the idea of my lover dying in one was painfully ironic.

  He didn’t appear, and I finally put a DO NOT DISTURB sign on my door so Brandon and Marcy and a myriad of other students would stop coming in to ask me if I knew his whereabouts. One thing was clear: the fact that I almost always knew where Dr. Archer was hadn’t escaped them. Who did I think I’d been kidding?

  Actually, I was waiting for Rich to leave for work at two-thirty before I went home. Even after I gave up on the resignation letter and tried to formulate a reason to give my husband for my sudden exit from Covenant Christian, I wasn’t even close.

  After all the lies I’d told him in the last six months, you’d think I could come up with one more. But there was too much piled on me, like the rubble of an earthquake. Too much pain and anger and guilt and shame and fear. I couldn’t dig my way out enough to even look at Rich, much less tell him our income had just been slashed by three-quarters and that I probably wouldn’t be able to get another job in Christian academia.

  I tried distracting myself by writing out a financial review. Rich didn’t make enough as a firefighter to support our lifestyle, especially with Christopher in college. We had some savings, a few investments. And the nest egg we’d gotten for Eddie after 9/11. I actually snapped the pencil in half at that thought. No way we were touching the “compensation” money from Rich’s brother’s heroism
to make up for what I’d done. And that went for the inheritance from Rich’s parents’ house too. Those precious people were not going to pay for my mistakes.

  I abandoned the money issue and went back to scribbling reasons to give Rich. Although I’d chattered to him about everything I did at CCC—until I found an actual listener in Zach—he probably hadn’t heard half of it from his cave. He might accept anything I told him.

  But teaching religion had been my passion ever since he’d known me. He used to say it was the thing that made him passionate about me, the way I lit up when I went on ad nauseam about my students learning to embrace the parables . . .

  I scratched everything out until I scraped a hole in the paper. Rich would never buy the idea that I just quit. The only thing close to the truth was that the constant conflict between Kaye’s vision for the college and St. Clair’s had finally gotten to me and I couldn’t be part of it anymore. Finally, I put all my attempts through the shredder and drove home to the hammer of rain on the Jeep’s soft top. The sound used to soothe me when I left Zach to go home to Rich. Now it accused me.

  I had until the next morning to think of something, maybe even days before he noticed I wasn’t going to campus . . .

  That hope faded the moment I pulled into the driveway and opened the garage door. Both Rich’s Harley and our green Range Rover were tucked inside. I glanced at my watch. After three. Rich should have left for the station forty-five minutes ago. A dread so heavy settled over me, I could barely climb out of the car.

  I pulled off my boots in the mudroom, chest seizing. There was no Zach to run to now, to tell me I was right. I padded into the kitchen and set my briefcase soundlessly on the counter. The house was so eerily quiet even my socks on the plank floor announced every footfall, as if something had come in and sucked out all the sound waves.

  The ground floor of our log home was one large open space, sectioned off by American Indian rugs we’d bought on our attempts at family outings and by cozy groupings of big-stuffed furniture that my two teenagers often rearranged to suit the need of the moment. Right now, the pair of russet recliners in the TV area were pushed to within a foot of the screen.